Robots Destroy Jobs | Intelligent Machines
Nearly Half of U.S. Jobs Could be Done by Computers
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Image: Danomyte, alexkopj, ryger via Shutterstock.com
by Cameron Scott | Singularity Hub
If computers become as smart as humans, will they do our jobs better than we can? A recent study [pdf] out of Oxford University found that almost half of U.S. jobs are vulnerable to being taken over by computers as artificial intelligence continues to improve. The study, based on 702 detailed job listings, found that computers could already replace many workers in transportation and logistics, production labor and administrative support.
But computers, armed with the ability to find patterns in big data sets, are also increasingly qualified to perform “non-routine cognitive tasks.”
“While computerization has been historically confined to routine tasks involving explicit rule-based activities, algorithms for big data are now rapidly entering domains reliant upon pattern recognition and can readily substitute for labor in a wide range of non-routine cognitive tasks,” write study authors Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne. Software already provides medical diagnoses and does legal research, for example.